Want to save money? Skip the kid's meal

Posted By Paul

My wife and I often have dinner with friends (who also have little ones). Since the kids aren't quite up to restaurant age yet we get takeout from various restaurants around town and we take turns hosting the meal.

We have been doing this for years, and we generally orders kid's meals so that our little ones will have something to eat.

Just a few weeks ago while our friends were hosting we noticed that our little one wasn't really interested in the restaurant food we ordered for him that week, so our friends offered him some apples and mac and cheese (which he happily ate).

We decided to try that from now on, where both families agree to have simple kid food available when it is their turn to host, so we don't feel the need to include kid's meals in our restaurant orders.

We save money on the kids meals and if our little one ends up wanting to try our restaurant fare my wife and I are happy to share our food. We've noticed this works especially well since our little one seems to enjoy trying new foods so he often prefers trying our food as opposed to his kids meal which is often a fairly boring chicken finger and fries sort of thing.

Plus when we get all the little ones together they often want to play, so the meal part of the evening is often brief and we end up giving him a snack at home right before bedtime anyway, so why pay the extra money for the food he doesn't eat?